Tip of My Iceberg

In southeastern Utah, an area of unique beauty features an extraordinary red-rock desert landscape that looks like a movie set. With its close proximity to Arches National Park, Moab is an adventurer’s dream.

It was the perfect playground for Beck and his family. Our Colorado kin value the diversity of environments that surround them, so they took the time to become better acquainted with this reddish wilderness.

I’ve always envied my daughter and her family. We live in flatter-than-a-pancake Florida, where the highest point is close to 300 feet above sea level. I think naming that town Mount Dora was a bit of a mockery. This isn’t the place for mountain biking or rock climbing. But Courtney and her family do this frequently, and their time in Moab was a wonderful adventure.

Having the outdoors to rely on for family exploits has a bonus: when you’re in the middle of nowhere, there really aren’t many opportunities for screens to abscond with one’s imagination — the environment is filled with wonders.

There’s a stark beauty in wilderness wandering. The lack of foliage, the abundance of browns and tans, and the dryness can make it feel more like a lack of something instead of an abundance of anything.

Whether we live in an environment considered wilderness or not, we all have had our wilderness experiences, when we feel adrift, or answers we’d like or need aren’t forthcoming. The Bible tells several stories of wilderness wandering that have been refining and character-building.

Moses is an example of multiple wilderness experiences. He was born in Egypt to Jewish parents at a time when the Pharaoh was trying to reduce the number of his Hebrew slaves. Moses’ mother put him in a basket, floated it down the Nile, only to be found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who, knowing it was a Hebrew baby boy, decided to raise him herself.

Moses grew up between the tension of two worlds, and when he made a massive mistake as a young man, fearing Pharaoh would kill him, he escaped to the wilderness, becoming a shepherd for forty years. He believed in God, but his mistake of killing an Egyptian soldier caused him to feel abandoned and exiled by God.

Until he came across a burning bush, which wasn’t consumed by the fire. God spoke to him from the bush, explaining that He wanted Moses to lead his enslaved people out of Egypt.

Forty years of feeling like a failure made him feel like a loser, so he rejected God’s request five times, until God finally offered to let him take his brother Aaron with him. God used him to bring ten plagues on Egypt, each one more devastating than the last, until Pharaoh finally let the people go after the firstborn of every Egyptian household died in one night with the last plague.

Moses led his people through the wilderness for forty years. What could have been devastating became a journey of love and provision for God’s people. He fed them manna from heaven daily, and He led them with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Their clothes and sandals never wore out. All this was because God saw them as His children.

“Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Israel is My son, my firstborn. So I say to you, ‘Let My son go so that he may serve Me’; and if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.’” Exodus 4:22-23.

What God did for Israel, bringing them through the hardship of the wilderness, the continual journey for forty years, was because He loved His people enough to strengthen and refine them.

Beck and his parents loved their wilderness wandering–for a day. They were able to return home to warm beds and hot food.

Personal wildernesses can be challenging, but our experiences can help us to become more mature and better able to cope with the vagaries of life.

You just have to see past the bleakness to the beauty of all God is doing.